The Assault of the Influencers

Opinion

Does our current cultural insistence on appearances mask a lack of, well, anything much at the core? / Illustration by Tara Jacoby

On my rare vacations, I tend to become one of those people who fantasize about starting a new life in whatever location they’ve traveled to. Over a couple of days in midsummer of last year, that location was L.A. I’d flown there with my family to celebrate my brother’s completion of his doctoral program, and considering the size of our group (and how difficult it is to get all the members of our household in one place at one time), we typically have to find some compromise between hitting the standard tourist traps and spending hours researching hidden gems known only to locals. For dinner after the graduation ceremony, we landed on a restaurant that was seemingly well-liked by Angelenos, from what we could gather online. If the interior design was a trustworthy sign — blue and purple lighting, ample florals and greenery, mid-century modern furniture — surely we were in for an agreeable meal.

Simply put, the place sucked. Not so much that anyone was at risk of food poisoning, but certain flubs couldn’t be ignored. Like the tough, woody ends left on the bottoms of my asparagus spears. Or the devastatingly overdone rib eye. Or how the menu promised pomme purée only to deliver a scoop of lumpy mashed potatoes more appropriate to a lousy school lunch. At times, it seemed the place was deliberately creating distractions to draw attention away from its flaws. With the blaringly loud live band, the waitresses toting lit sparklers, and the photographers milling about — yes, in-house photographers, hired to take pictures of patrons to be framed and sold to them at an additional cost during the meal — I could barely keep my wits about me enough to even complain (an activity I normally relish).

I encountered the same situation during subsequent outings, at places where it seemed so much time and effort had been poured into appealing visuals and atmosphere that everything else, including whatever was actually being consumed, was an afterthought. I’d enter these places with high hopes, proceed to be entirely underwhelmed or outright disappointed, then look across the room to see someone about my age, phone in hand, snapping ­flattering photos and video to be posted alongside captions raving about the experience. I very much enjoyed my long weekend in ­California — a fun summer trip with my family to a new city, and our first since the pandemic. But the imaginary life I pictured in this destination looked a little grim.

I wanted to chalk this up to a couple of possibilities — that it was a fluke, and I was just a visitor with too little time to seek out the real gems of the city’s cultural landscape. Or that maybe I had, in fact, gotten a semi-accurate taste of what L.A. is like. After all, Tinseltown is known for valuing a captivating appearance above all else.

Either way, I flew home fully ­spiraling into a morbid fantasy that Philly, too, might one day become some kind of Instagrammified cultural wasteland, with our culinary scene offering nothing but cheese pulls and espresso martini towers, our museums and public art serving as little more than backdrops for pics of people’s outfits, and every boutique sporting fake grass walls and neon signs displaying flippant little phrases in cursive type. And the human embodiment of this nightmare: the influencers, with blinding LED ring lights attached to their phones, the tearing of food items down the middle to show the innards, and that voice they do — upward inflection, ultra-high energy, often paired with buzzwords and phrases like “obsessed” or “I’ve been gatekeeping this.”

This nightmare not only exists but is commonplace in other major metropolitan areas. Vibes-first establishments that coast on eye candy and style but neglect substance are rampant in cities with strong tourist economies, like Miami, Las Vegas, and D.C. The New York Times recently published a piece — “Is the Restaurant Good? Or Does It Just Look Good?” — that explored the rising focus on Instagrammability, fine-tuned branding, and expansive, expensive design in that city’s dining scene. Add to this a booming influencer population always looking for the next ­picture-perfect thing — there are quite literally millions of influencers in the U.S. and tens of millions worldwide, according to a 2023 Goldman Sachs report — and it’s hard to believe Philly stands a chance against the coming vibe-pocalypse.

“New York restaurants now have a new thing — they don’t sell their food, they sell their atmosphere,” Andy Warhol wrote all the way back in 1975. “Pretty soon when food prices go really up, they’ll be selling only atmosphere.” Frighteningly prophetic.

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Lackluster restaurants, art, music, and movies have always existed and always will. But this specific kind of monotony points to a larger trend. Kyle Chayka, a writer for the New Yorker, explores the concept of a culture led by algorithms in his 2024 book, Filterworld, and looks at how the shift from chronological social media feeds to the omnipresent recommendation-algorithm-based feeds has had a flattening effect.

Before we dive any deeper, a quick lesson on algorithms: The UC Berkeley Center for Science, Technology, Medicine, & Society loosely defines the term as “a set of rules to direct the behavior of machines or humans.” For our purposes, we’re focusing on recommendation algorithms, which analyze data associated with behaviors and content to tailor suggestions to you, the individual user. Simple enough, right? What gets interesting is how tech companies use these algorithms.

Let’s briefly dispel one myth while we’re at it: Though we colloquially call this phenomenon “the algorithm,” there is no singular worldwide algorithm bearing the entirety of tech and social media on its back. Different platforms use different variables, and all of them keep their machinations secret, for the most part. This leaves content creators and consumers alike scrambling to comprehend whatever guidelines they presume the platform has set that week. One thing we can say with some certainty is that in this age of the recommendation algorithm, homogeneity is key: Like all apps, platforms like Instagram and TikTok promote what fits their formulae.

Chayka argues that this dynamic is not only diminishing our ability to develop our own tastes and to find things that go against the homogeneity of the algorithm but still might appeal to us; it also diminishes the ability of culture to think outside the box, creating an anxiety-inducing sameness that feels “inescapable, alienating, even as it is marketed as desirable.”

We live in a time in which culture must promote itself to survive, sometimes to the point that the promotional efforts get more attention than the product.”

In a time when our tastes and interests are often driven by what we consume on social media — or what is recommended by social media for us to consume — it is an inescapable task to have to constantly boost your work online as a restaurateur or an artist or a writer or, really, anything at all. We live in a time in which culture must promote itself to survive, sometimes to the point that the promotional efforts get more attention than the product. All creative acts are “content” first and art or food or anything else second. (Sorry, Scorsese.) Not performing such promotion, or not doing so in a sufficiently algorithm-friendly way, means you risk not making it onto users’ feeds and therefore not finding an audience. This is where the influencers come in.

“When I joined this agency at the beginning of 2023, it was around the time when influencers were becoming a lot more mainstream and popular to use in restaurants,” says Zoe Shipenberg, content director at Peter Breslow Public Relations, which works with Philly staples like ­Kalaya and Suraya. Upon starting the job, she says, she pushed for PBPR to begin building relationships with local influencers to help promote the agency’s long list of restaurant and retail clients. Nowadays, tasks like drafting lists of favorable influencers, organizing visits, and fielding requests for collaborations are a significant part of her day, along with maintaining her clients’ own online presences. “Social media has taken a huge front seat when it comes to spreading news about restaurants.”

She’s not wrong. Influencers — these “cowboys of algorithms,” as Chayka calls them — are an undeniably useful publicity tool in the online sphere. Billy Penn, the Inquirer, and even this magazine have all covered the city’s burgeoning (and sometimes quite lucrative) influencer industry. According to a 2023 Statista report, marketing via influencers has become one of the most popular and effective forms, totaling $21.1 billion globally in spending that year — triple the 2019 cost. And with the number of aspiring influencers growing across the country — one 2023 Morning Consult survey found that 57 percent of Gen Zers and 41 percent of adults in general said they would choose influencing as a career path if given the chance — that total should continue to rise. Bleak stuff. Even bleaker: As with all economic bubbles, this one runs the risk of popping.

Any social media user who makes a living (or hopes to) off the monetization of likes and follows is aware of the reality that the field is highly competitive and relatively unstable, and that any sense of security or longevity in a social media career is hard to hold onto. Some local examples, like Santiago Ortiz, a Temple student and the brains behind ­­@­NoShortsUSA on ­Instagram and TikTok, nonetheless remain confident. No Shorts — he requested we refer to him as such for the purposes of this piece — much prefers the term content creator to influencer. “You’re only going to get paid so long as you work and you’re doing good work,” he tells me. “If my audience doesn’t find my content informative or fun or engaging, then little by little, I’m gonna be out of a job. It’s kind of up to you to continuously try to improve yourself and establish a positive brand. That’s why I care a lot about the way I cover issues and talk about things.”

He’s referring to the meticulous methods by which he plans, researches, scripts, and shoots his videos. And the effort shows. I quite like his work and find it particularly thoughtful amid a sea of throwaway videos about the same five rooftop bars. There are many subtle tendencies of influencers and content creators that grate on my nerves, and while No Shorts has little choice but to consider algorithmic factors like wording, visually interesting backgrounds, and making sure the first three to five seconds of a video are attention-grabbing enough that viewers stick around for the rest, he eschews the more gimmicky side of content creation. Homogeneity is a big part of getting on top of wily, unpredictable algorithms, but carving out a niche that only you can fill is simply clever business strategy. Though No Shorts makes plenty of lighthearted 30-second clips about Herr’s chips and the Delco accent, just as many of his posts last well over a minute and cover meatier topics, like the Sixers arena fiasco and SEPTA’s budget deficit.

Like any dedicated content creator, No Shorts wants to make this his full-time job. He agrees that’s a daunting goal, though he tells me that with the growth of his platform — he had about 84,000 followers on Instagram and more than 275,000 on TikTok the last I checked — he’s closer to it than ever. But, he notes, it’s a bit more precarious than more-fans-more-money. Content creators and influencers typically make a profit through brand deals, affiliate marketing, monetized subscriptions, and even selling their own products — in addition, of course, to platforms’ revenue funds, like TikTok’s Creator Reward Program, whose payout depends on factors including followers and views. He explains that his payout from TikTok has ­actually decreased since last year, despite the increase in attention on his work. Though he prefers coming up with fresh ideas for videos and working on boosting his viewership organically to, say, comped meals and cozying up to brand names, he has to rely on a variety of means.

For the vast majority of creators in the city, the prospects are even shakier. A 2023 report by influencer marketing agency NeoReach claimed that nearly half of all online content creators earn $15,000 or less yearly for their work. Influencing can be unstable, competitive, and often fruitless work. And considering the number of hopefuls in the saturated field, it’s inevitable that the antics of some tend to rub us the wrong way.

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When I asked friends and peers if I was being overly critical of influencers and this cultural trend that’s being called “Instagrammification,” some of them said yes, a little, but added that in many ways, I was right to be. One of my colleagues had recently noticed, with some displeasure, more and more content creators videoing themselves in exercise classes, frequently without the consent of other attendees. Another described an encounter in the aisle of a South Philly Acme where a fledgling influencer had blocked off access to a cereal shelf in order to record a TikTok dance. Bartenders at some of my favorite haunts confirmed my suspicions about the flattening effect Instagrammification is having on the city’s culinary culture, though I’m reluctant to name and shame. A friend told me about having to adjust their concertgoing tendencies after a negative experience one night at Franklin Music Hall seeing indie-pop singer Djo, best known for his mega-viral song “End of Beginning.” “Half the people there were TikTok content creators,” they said, “with lots of people shoving folks just to try to get the best videos or pictures. It was nasty.” They’ve stopped going to larger venues altogether, opting instead for smaller shows and nights at the Philadelphia Orchestra, where seats are assigned and elbowing is highly frowned upon.

For better or for worse, we are easily swayed by visuals — by reels of runny eggs, glistening cheesesteaks, and people splitting apart big gobs of burrata.”

Many aspects of this whole dynamic, if not the entirety of our current algorithm-driven culture, aren’t ideal. But it persists. Algorithms are hugely successful, with a number of factors propelling their pervasiveness. Shipenberg, No Shorts, and a slew of researchers studying the intersection of tech and culture agree that for better or for worse in this day and age, we are easily swayed by visuals — not only by reels of runny eggs, glistening cheesesteaks, and people splitting apart big gobs of burrata, but also by videos that show us exactly what the interior of an establishment looks like before we decide to visit it. Reading a review in the paper or looking up a menu isn’t enough; it’s about knowing what a place looks like inside and out, exactly how a dish will arrive at the table, where the bathroom is and if it’s suitable for selfies. Perhaps this is all a by-­product of the anxiety and uncertainty of the pandemic days, when leaving the house required a lot more preparation than it does now. Or maybe it’s a natural outcome of our culture of convenience, where we can have almost whatever we want to eat, whenever we want to eat it, with close to no surprises or risks, and where 138 million Americans used an online grocery delivery service and 173 million used a meal delivery service in 2024.

And we want those videos delivered to us by a voice we trust and can relate to. We’re swayed by the opinions of people we feel a kinship with, even if that kinship was developed through a screen. Researchers have found that the closer two people feel, the more, well, influence they have over each other’s food choices. It makes sense, then, that social media users take the reviews and recommendations of their favorite influencers seriously even when those suggestions come from nonexperts. The fact that someone isn’t an expert is actually part of the appeal. The ability to be both relatable and aspirational is a useful tool that keeps followers devoted.

It’s also simply easier to allow an algorithm to interpret what our tastes might be and then feed that interpretation back to us than it is to form our own tastes sui generis. In his book, Chayka writes about the changing role of tastemakers in our culture and how developing personal tastes is a time-consuming task that requires us to actually try things when we may not know if we’ll end up liking them or not. Why do all that work when a formula designed by some Silicon Valley nerd can handle it for you?

All of this creates a setting ripe for ­Instagrammification to take the reins of our cultural landscape. The question is: Can we take them back?

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In the early 2010s, Anthony Bourdain had a show on the Travel Channel called The Layover. In each episode, he spent a day or two exploring a new destination, guided by local chef friends. In season two, he came to our town and sat down with Michael Solomonov for bowls of pho and a chat about the “Philly attitude.”

“Velvet rope, bottle service — that wouldn’t go over big here?” Bourdain ­noted. Solomonov concurred.

For a long time, whenever I described Philadelphia to friends and family who didn’t live here, that was essentially how I painted the picture: a salt-of-the-earth place largely uninterested in pure flash. I thought, and still think, that the city has a sort of natural revulsion to empty spectacle. Vibe-focused dining historically hasn’t fared well here. In recent years, clubby dining spots like SIN and Bankroll were lambasted by critics and ridiculed by citizens, then closed swiftly and unceremoniously. Just a few months ago, several Glu Hospitality restaurants shuttered one after another — likely more because of wage-theft allegations and liquor-licensing woes than just their showy looks and subpar food, but the point remains.

This isn’t to say that I think Instagrammification will one day rule us all and there will be no good restaurants or museums or shops left in the city — that everything will essentially be a Cheesecake Factory with more enticing interior design. Philly is still irrefutably a powerhouse of a food and art destination, predominantly unencumbered by the demands of the larger algorithm-driven culture. In fact, our culinary triumphs are that much more valuable for having conquered in spite of these obstacles. Even when room is made for aesthetics, talent and skill are usually there to back them up, to say nothing of the places that don’t fret over algorithms and aesthetics to begin with.

“These chefs are very committed to their professional integrity,” Shipenberg says of her clients. “They don’t want to just create something that’s Instagrammable. They want to create something that critics will rave about, stuff that will get them a James Beard Award.”

What I am saying is that our culture and how we develop our sense of taste are ­changing — perhaps to be more democratic, perhaps to be less discerning. Granted, I’m a journalist and, maybe more important, a touch pretentious myself. I spend a lot of time reevaluating my tastes, and I like to think that things like substance over style, and expertise, and trained critics play a significant role in that. But the era of critics and experts as tastemakers is fading in this tech-dominated modern age, and the era of likes and shares as signifiers of merit seems to be emerging. Out with the old, in with the new?

As grating as I may find influencers when I encounter them in the wild, with their giant ring lights and Instagram-­tailored catchphrases, I do find a little comfort in believing that we share the same goal: putting on display all the things we love about this town.

Published as “The Assault of the Influencers” in the July 2025 issue of Philadelphia magazine.